1. Field of the Invention
The presently disclosed embodiments are directed to providing a collation system, and more particularly, to a fully automated collation system that is capable of collating cards at high speed (e.g., 24,000/hr.).
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, greeting cards are produced by tying high speed die cutters to high speed sheet feeders and continuously feeding up to 24,000 cards per hour in a 2-up configuration with 8 cards (4 per left and right side). A customer order can range from 2 to 100 cards per order and the orders are divided into 2-up lanes that stop and start randomly on either side of the sheet and not in the intercopy gap which leads to very high speed job to job changes. The cards need to be delivered to customers in collated and banded stacks. Presently, the output of the cards is shingled and manually collated in accordance with each customer's order and each order is manually banded. Usually, the demand for the cards is highly cyclical and to accommodate dramatic fluctuation in demand temporary workers are added at peak times. This causes several issues including: the high use of temporary workers to collate, band and sort the cards into sets; difficulty in locating and hiring the temporary workers; and defects introduced by the workers into the product (missed or incorrectly collated or banded sets).
Moreover, current greeting card collating, banding and sorting systems are dependent on temporary worker actions which are less predictable than an automated system. Examples of signage production and signage cutting/collating systems are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/523,963, filed on Oct. 27, 2014 and titled TAPED MEDIA IMPOSITION FOR ADHESIVE IN-STORE SIGNAGE, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/524,018, filed on Oct. 27, 2014 and titled VARIABLE GUIDE SYSTEM FOR SHINGLING IN-STORE ADHESIVE SIGNAGE, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,126,761, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/582,426, filed on Dec. 24, 2014 and titled MULTI-STAGE COLLATION SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR HIGH SPEED COMPILING OF SEQUENTIALLY ORDERED IN-STORE SIGNAGE, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/594,711, filed on Jan. 12, 2015 and titled COLLATION SYSTEM WITH RETRACTABLE GUIDES, along with U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/699,186, filed on Apr. 29, 2015 and titled HIGH SPEED MULTI-BIN CARD COLLATION SYSTEM.
A conventional system that collates products is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 8,770,911 B2 that includes a collating conveyor that receives products sequentially from a delivery point and collates them into groups. A pusher transfers the groups of products from the conveyor to a receiving trough.
Therefore, in view of the known prior art, there is a still a need for a cost effective solution that will alleviate personnel demands for high speed greeting card lines.